6 ms·

Solopreneurs Are Changing the Face of the Economy

64 points by webmaven 5y ago

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Ugh, I couldn't get through half of this article without throwing up in my mouth a little. Look, I'm a huge fan and believer in the benefits of entrepreneurship, but can we stop pretending like more than a small fraction of these "solopreneurs" (I hate that word, I guess if it's French it sounds cooler than "self employed") will be making more than an Uber driver? We are moving much more towards a "Hollywood" style economy, where a few superstars gobble up the majority of income and capital, while everyone else working at Starbucks dreams they'll "make it big" one day before half of them end up in porn. What is, and has been, disappearing is a broad-based, stable economic system that benefits the masses. I don't mean to be so negative, but these ridiculous "rah rah" articles that obfuscate the true nature of what is going on infuriate me.
- SpaceInvader 5y ago
  I'd say it's mostly a matter of energy and time you wish to put into becoming a successful entrepreneur. My experience tells me that first two-three years is a grind, then you can loosen that regime a bit, depending on what you want to achieve. If you're ok with making more (like x1.5 - 2.0 times more) than when employed you can relax and settle on 8-10h a day, if not - real benefits come later, but I think you'll need to hire somebody anyways.
- mescaline 5y ago
  You do sound negative, but I understand where you are coming from. I can't speak for the other soloers, but this solo affair over here is going to make WAY more than an Uber driver. Hell, I may make more than Uber itself. That's the power of positive thought and focused attention. That attention nets positive feedback. I did this. Nobody else. Well, except for that bit Joe did. Thanks Joe. Remember, anything is possible at Zombo.com.
- g8oz 5y ago
  Yes and we need better language and analogies to talk about the non-superstars in these "new" economic arrangements. Gig economy workers being directed by an API Ala Uber/delivery apps are analogous to landless laborers in developing economies. Those with a virtual "stall" on someone else's platform (Etsy/Youtube/mobile app stores) are reminiscent of sharecroppers.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- adventured 5y ago
  > What is, and has been, disappearing is a broad-based, stable economic system that benefits the masses. Median income hasn't eroded. Real unemployment is again nearing historic lows. Median wealth hasn't eroded. US median wealth remains higher than Germany or Sweden. Which, if you buy into the propaganda about the US (vs eg German worker protections and or Sweden's social safety net), that outcome should be impossible. And for the US that's all despite one of the greatest demographic changes in world history, in which the US middle class has been massively shifted by an influx of low education, impoverished third world immigrants (which is the opposite approach of most affluent nations; for example Canada or Australia, they hyper restrict immigration based on scoring systems meant to keep poor people largely out, focusing instead of highly qualified immigrants that can immediately contribute to the welfare state tax base). The fact is, the US has done extraordinarily well against that demographic change backdrop when it comes to the middle class and median figures. And this factor - dramatic demographic shift for the US middle class and median - is almost universally and intentionally ignored in the name of propaganda points. It turns out that if you flood a country with tens of millions of poor people that don't speak the primary language, it might downward drag on the figures you see in the middle class and median (ie it pushes downward on all of that until the recent immigrants have enough time to adjust and gain positioning in society: gain education, gain income, gain wealth, establish careers, leading progress into second or third generations). It can take generations for someone moving to a new culture, with little formal education, without the ability to speak the primary language, with no job or wealth supporting them, to get anywhere. Want to see this effect in action? Look at the median white household wealth and income figures, today vs 1970 / 1980 / 1990. In 1980 the US was around 5%-6% hispanic for example, the middle class was almost exclusively white. Today the US middle class is increasingly hispanic, and that trend will continue aggressively for decades to come. Now do the right thing and account for that when talking about how well the US middle class has done over the last 30 or 50 years (it's not the same demographic, it's not the same group of people, it has changed). If you move from Honduras to the US in 1993, previously living a third world lifestyle with minimum formal education and no ability to speak English; and then you lift yourself to the level of the US middle class by the 2010s, how do you account for showing that radical improvement in the US figures as it pertains to the middle class, if all it shows in the US figures is supposed stagnation (when what has really happened is the prior middle class demographic has moved upward, while formerly poor hispanics have moved in to the US middle class slot)? If you don't account for the epic scale demographic shift, then what you're proposing is hyper misleading.
- rozenmd 5y ago
  Here in France they actually call it auto-entrepreneur, funnily enough (self-entrepreneur)
- hklgny 5y ago
  You do sound negative and it doesn’t seem like a useful negativity. The world consolidating into so few companies is new, and any attempt at smaller more self sufficient businesses seems to me like a good thing. Who cares if they make the equivalent of an Uber driver. Making that money not driving for Uber adds variety to the economy and we all win as a result. It’s like opening a modern day corner store. Sure they all look similar, but it’s ownership and it matters and the people doing it should be proud of themselves.
  - jaredklewis 5y ago
    If the bulk of these solopreneurs are—in their role as entrepreneurs—as economically productive as corner store owners, then I agree that this trend is great. But the parent is asserting that the reality is that most of these solopreneurs are a actually just delusional, in that they consider themselves entrepreneurs but aren’t actually all that enterprising. My intuition is that the parent is right, but the article doesn’t have much data to support or refute either of these theories.
- m0llusk 5y ago
  That is still huge. Mostly these are ordinary people pursuing their interests and sharing. The profits may be modest, but are on the same scale as employment they are qualified for and with much better fit and volatility.
- 6510 5y ago
  I'm not sure how accurate it is but I hear that at a time US salaries were high because the bar was low on starting a farm. Employers had to bid against that life style. Today employers are looking for different abilities but those do seem to [greatly] overlap with what it takes to run your own shop. Another thought I had was how poor job interviews still perform. There are lots of people who consider themselves capable but would have a hard time convincing others.
Centigonal 5y ago
I've been saying this for ages, but as consolidation and increasing commercial rent continnues to erode local businesses, the "mom-n-pop shop" concept is growing online. People are selling custom wares on Etsy/Shopify, running a Youtube/Twitch channel, becoming Amazon FBA vendors, etc. A big difference is that both expenses and revenue are lower, and people are usually dependent on one or multiple big corpo platforms for customer discovery and continued success.
- attilaperez 5y ago
  The AWSification of small business is going to have interesting results down the road. I couldn't imagine the hair pulling that Etsy sellers and Youtube creators must go through day-to-day. Having a monolith hand that feeds you, doesn't even perceive you, and couldn't care a bit about you dictate your financial present and future sounds unnerving.
ilamont 5y ago
I'm skeptical of the hard definitions that arise around "entrepreneurship" which can become dogmatic and exclusionary, like we once saw with investors and some accelerators insisting that you were either a "startup" (a real entrepreneur hitting for the fences!) or a "lifestyle business" (not serious, and little more than a hobby). I see this article trying to create a similar dynamic, with "Solopreneur" being the new "lifestyle business" ("While the entrepreneur is looking to create a major enterprise, a solopreneur wants to create their enterprise alone ... to redefine their work-life balance or find purpose in starting something uniquely their own.") Regardless, when people from the startup world use the term “lifestyle business” or "solopreneur" or "small business" or whatever to describe real businesses that aren’t pure tech, have solo founders, don’t take VC money, don’t intend to scale to a billion users, or whatever other qualities are not worthy of investor consideration, I find it condescending and misguided.
- cbreynoldson 5y ago
  I think people, by nature, tend to bucket others into a set of a few archetypes because it is easier to process the world this way. Most of it is out of ignorance - humans are always trying to conceptualize their lives in ways that can be understood, manipulated, and talked about. It is a shame that companies are passed up because they don't fit perfectly into one of a few categories. This is partially why research institutions and research-based companies are often overlooked or micromanaged.
- caseyf7 5y ago
  All you can do is prove them wrong. When you do, you won’t care what they call it and then you can turn them down.
oldstrangers 5y ago
I think the real shift is in "productizing" yourself (if you're able to). I created https://gloutir.com https://gloutir.com, a subscription service for design and development. It costs a company roughly 1.2-1.4x an employees actual salary to keep them on the payroll. So a $47,000 a year employee actually costs that company about $65,800. Productizing myself, you can afford to pay me MORE than $47,000 a year, while still paying out less than you would for a regular employee. Plus, I can work for multiple companies at once. This all sounds like glorified freelancing, and it basically is, but the fixed monthly rates are more preferable for everyone involved vs billable hours.
- attilaperez 5y ago
  Really slick website, love it. When you talk about "we" is that the royal "we"?
  - oldstrangers 5y ago
    Haha thank you, and yes basically! It's too weird to say "I" a lot for me.
- busymom0 5y ago
  Love the website design!
  - oldstrangers 5y ago
    Thank you!
mathgladiator 5y ago
One of the reasons that I'm a "solopreneurs" is that I have no real desire to manage people for a few years. Honestly, I hate being an employee. I'm also embracing a wanton desire to be playful rather than an effective market strategy. For example, my latest pathology is that I'm building my own datastore for my service. I'm preparing to launch it as I audit my few users' usage. In a "bias towards getting to the market" sense, this is an awful approach. However, I'm having fun and making strides on a few defining dimensions. It could be said that I'm building a lifestyle business, but I don't believe so. Instead, I'm defining the foundation for a robust and long lived infrastructure game. If you believe the future is bigger than the present, then the markets will only get more exotic and bigger. There will be more room, and more customers that need to be serviced.
mark_l_watson 5y ago
I have mixed feelings about owning a business vs. working for a corporation. I retired last month and the bulk of my retirement comes from working for a few companies that paid me very well, in some cases their stock was a good deal, and in some cases I had time set aside for my own research. That said, there can be a lot of BS involved working for other people, and some of the happiest people I know have their own business. Here in the USA, despite really low unemployment numbers, the divide between people who are well off and people who just get by is widening and more people are falling into something that looks more like poverty than a solid middle class lifestyle. In the future, it seems to me that to be well off you either need to have specific skills that corporations value or you need to own a viable business. This is difficult for me to say because I have always valued free time (in the last 45 years I have probably averaged working about 26 to 30 hours a week), in modern times I would recommend having a side gig and a job. Go for maximum flexibility.
akeck 5y ago
As someone in the US, I'd be a solopreneur in a moment, if the healthcare situation didn't suck. At this point in my life, it suits me better than being an employee. Things are better post-ACA than pre-ACA, but still not all that great - especially if you live in a state that's not ACA friendly.
- busymom0 5y ago
  Do you think if one can make enough money from being a solopreneur to get private health insurance coverage, then it would tip on their favour? How much would a private health insurance plan cost per month?
  - NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
    I spent 6 months on a private health insurance plan 4 years ago. It was about $200 per month with a very high deductible. This is in a state that is favorable for ACA. I just hopped on the state website now and I can get a similar plan with a premium of $250 per month. There are a lot of options with better deductibles and higher premiums. It's a burden for those who want to go without external employment, but I found it reasonable. It's less than my monthly budget for food.
    - busymom0 5y ago
      That honestly doesn't sound that bad. Any solopreneur who's planning on going independent could afford this by 2-3 nights of Uber over a weekend.
ilaksh 5y ago
What I have been doing recently is taking advantage of a cryptocurrency created by an MIT professor that has very low fees and facilitates micro transactions. I won't mention it by name because that is as far as I can tell an instant comment bury on HN. But the point being is that I have taken my recent consulting projects and turned them into automated services (i.e. web applications and APIs) that multiple people in the ecosystem can use. Cryptocurrency has helped make it simple to monetize these services. So the particular project I am hired for becomes the seed money for another app. And actually I took very little money for a few projects and have been working on an API that both will plug into for a few months while splitting my time with other subprojects. But if everything works out then I will have more income based on each each smart contract call to generate an NFT.

64 points by webmaven 5y ago

Ugh, I couldn't get through half of this article without throwing up in my mouth a little. Look, I'm a huge fan and believer in the benefits of entrepreneurship, but can we stop pretending like more than a small fraction of these "solopreneurs" (I hate that word, I guess if it's French it sounds cooler than "self employed") will be making more than an Uber driver? We are moving much more towards a "Hollywood" style economy, where a few superstars gobble up the majority of income and capital, while everyone else working at Starbucks dreams they'll "make it big" one day before half of them end up in porn. What is, and has been, disappearing is a broad-based, stable economic system that benefits the masses. I don't mean to be so negative, but these ridiculous "rah rah" articles that obfuscate the true nature of what is going on infuriate me.

SpaceInvader 5y ago
I'd say it's mostly a matter of energy and time you wish to put into becoming a successful entrepreneur. My experience tells me that first two-three years is a grind, then you can loosen that regime a bit, depending on what you want to achieve. If you're ok with making more (like x1.5 - 2.0 times more) than when employed you can relax and settle on 8-10h a day, if not - real benefits come later, but I think you'll need to hire somebody anyways.
mescaline 5y ago
You do sound negative, but I understand where you are coming from. I can't speak for the other soloers, but this solo affair over here is going to make WAY more than an Uber driver. Hell, I may make more than Uber itself. That's the power of positive thought and focused attention. That attention nets positive feedback. I did this. Nobody else. Well, except for that bit Joe did. Thanks Joe. Remember, anything is possible at Zombo.com.
g8oz 5y ago
Yes and we need better language and analogies to talk about the non-superstars in these "new" economic arrangements. Gig economy workers being directed by an API Ala Uber/delivery apps are analogous to landless laborers in developing economies. Those with a virtual "stall" on someone else's platform (Etsy/Youtube/mobile app stores) are reminiscent of sharecroppers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
adventured 5y ago
> What is, and has been, disappearing is a broad-based, stable economic system that benefits the masses. Median income hasn't eroded. Real unemployment is again nearing historic lows. Median wealth hasn't eroded. US median wealth remains higher than Germany or Sweden. Which, if you buy into the propaganda about the US (vs eg German worker protections and or Sweden's social safety net), that outcome should be impossible. And for the US that's all despite one of the greatest demographic changes in world history, in which the US middle class has been massively shifted by an influx of low education, impoverished third world immigrants (which is the opposite approach of most affluent nations; for example Canada or Australia, they hyper restrict immigration based on scoring systems meant to keep poor people largely out, focusing instead of highly qualified immigrants that can immediately contribute to the welfare state tax base). The fact is, the US has done extraordinarily well against that demographic change backdrop when it comes to the middle class and median figures. And this factor - dramatic demographic shift for the US middle class and median - is almost universally and intentionally ignored in the name of propaganda points. It turns out that if you flood a country with tens of millions of poor people that don't speak the primary language, it might downward drag on the figures you see in the middle class and median (ie it pushes downward on all of that until the recent immigrants have enough time to adjust and gain positioning in society: gain education, gain income, gain wealth, establish careers, leading progress into second or third generations). It can take generations for someone moving to a new culture, with little formal education, without the ability to speak the primary language, with no job or wealth supporting them, to get anywhere. Want to see this effect in action? Look at the median white household wealth and income figures, today vs 1970 / 1980 / 1990. In 1980 the US was around 5%-6% hispanic for example, the middle class was almost exclusively white. Today the US middle class is increasingly hispanic, and that trend will continue aggressively for decades to come. Now do the right thing and account for that when talking about how well the US middle class has done over the last 30 or 50 years (it's not the same demographic, it's not the same group of people, it has changed). If you move from Honduras to the US in 1993, previously living a third world lifestyle with minimum formal education and no ability to speak English; and then you lift yourself to the level of the US middle class by the 2010s, how do you account for showing that radical improvement in the US figures as it pertains to the middle class, if all it shows in the US figures is supposed stagnation (when what has really happened is the prior middle class demographic has moved upward, while formerly poor hispanics have moved in to the US middle class slot)? If you don't account for the epic scale demographic shift, then what you're proposing is hyper misleading.
rozenmd 5y ago
Here in France they actually call it auto-entrepreneur, funnily enough (self-entrepreneur)
hklgny 5y ago
You do sound negative and it doesn’t seem like a useful negativity. The world consolidating into so few companies is new, and any attempt at smaller more self sufficient businesses seems to me like a good thing. Who cares if they make the equivalent of an Uber driver. Making that money not driving for Uber adds variety to the economy and we all win as a result. It’s like opening a modern day corner store. Sure they all look similar, but it’s ownership and it matters and the people doing it should be proud of themselves.
- jaredklewis 5y ago
  If the bulk of these solopreneurs are—in their role as entrepreneurs—as economically productive as corner store owners, then I agree that this trend is great. But the parent is asserting that the reality is that most of these solopreneurs are a actually just delusional, in that they consider themselves entrepreneurs but aren’t actually all that enterprising. My intuition is that the parent is right, but the article doesn’t have much data to support or refute either of these theories.
m0llusk 5y ago
That is still huge. Mostly these are ordinary people pursuing their interests and sharing. The profits may be modest, but are on the same scale as employment they are qualified for and with much better fit and volatility.
6510 5y ago
I'm not sure how accurate it is but I hear that at a time US salaries were high because the bar was low on starting a farm. Employers had to bid against that life style. Today employers are looking for different abilities but those do seem to [greatly] overlap with what it takes to run your own shop. Another thought I had was how poor job interviews still perform. There are lots of people who consider themselves capable but would have a hard time convincing others.

Centigonal 5y ago

I've been saying this for ages, but as consolidation and increasing commercial rent continnues to erode local businesses, the "mom-n-pop shop" concept is growing online. People are selling custom wares on Etsy/Shopify, running a Youtube/Twitch channel, becoming Amazon FBA vendors, etc. A big difference is that both expenses and revenue are lower, and people are usually dependent on one or multiple big corpo platforms for customer discovery and continued success.

attilaperez 5y ago
The AWSification of small business is going to have interesting results down the road. I couldn't imagine the hair pulling that Etsy sellers and Youtube creators must go through day-to-day. Having a monolith hand that feeds you, doesn't even perceive you, and couldn't care a bit about you dictate your financial present and future sounds unnerving.

ilamont 5y ago

I'm skeptical of the hard definitions that arise around "entrepreneurship" which can become dogmatic and exclusionary, like we once saw with investors and some accelerators insisting that you were either a "startup" (a real entrepreneur hitting for the fences!) or a "lifestyle business" (not serious, and little more than a hobby). I see this article trying to create a similar dynamic, with "Solopreneur" being the new "lifestyle business" ("While the entrepreneur is looking to create a major enterprise, a solopreneur wants to create their enterprise alone ... to redefine their work-life balance or find purpose in starting something uniquely their own.") Regardless, when people from the startup world use the term “lifestyle business” or "solopreneur" or "small business" or whatever to describe real businesses that aren’t pure tech, have solo founders, don’t take VC money, don’t intend to scale to a billion users, or whatever other qualities are not worthy of investor consideration, I find it condescending and misguided.

cbreynoldson 5y ago
I think people, by nature, tend to bucket others into a set of a few archetypes because it is easier to process the world this way. Most of it is out of ignorance - humans are always trying to conceptualize their lives in ways that can be understood, manipulated, and talked about. It is a shame that companies are passed up because they don't fit perfectly into one of a few categories. This is partially why research institutions and research-based companies are often overlooked or micromanaged.
caseyf7 5y ago
All you can do is prove them wrong. When you do, you won’t care what they call it and then you can turn them down.

oldstrangers 5y ago

I think the real shift is in "productizing" yourself (if you're able to). I created https://gloutir.com https://gloutir.com, a subscription service for design and development. It costs a company roughly 1.2-1.4x an employees actual salary to keep them on the payroll. So a $47,000 a year employee actually costs that company about $65,800. Productizing myself, you can afford to pay me MORE than $47,000 a year, while still paying out less than you would for a regular employee. Plus, I can work for multiple companies at once. This all sounds like glorified freelancing, and it basically is, but the fixed monthly rates are more preferable for everyone involved vs billable hours.

attilaperez 5y ago
Really slick website, love it. When you talk about "we" is that the royal "we"?
- oldstrangers 5y ago
  Haha thank you, and yes basically! It's too weird to say "I" a lot for me.
busymom0 5y ago
Love the website design!
- oldstrangers 5y ago
  Thank you!

mathgladiator 5y ago

One of the reasons that I'm a "solopreneurs" is that I have no real desire to manage people for a few years. Honestly, I hate being an employee. I'm also embracing a wanton desire to be playful rather than an effective market strategy. For example, my latest pathology is that I'm building my own datastore for my service. I'm preparing to launch it as I audit my few users' usage. In a "bias towards getting to the market" sense, this is an awful approach. However, I'm having fun and making strides on a few defining dimensions. It could be said that I'm building a lifestyle business, but I don't believe so. Instead, I'm defining the foundation for a robust and long lived infrastructure game. If you believe the future is bigger than the present, then the markets will only get more exotic and bigger. There will be more room, and more customers that need to be serviced.

mark_l_watson 5y ago

I have mixed feelings about owning a business vs. working for a corporation. I retired last month and the bulk of my retirement comes from working for a few companies that paid me very well, in some cases their stock was a good deal, and in some cases I had time set aside for my own research. That said, there can be a lot of BS involved working for other people, and some of the happiest people I know have their own business. Here in the USA, despite really low unemployment numbers, the divide between people who are well off and people who just get by is widening and more people are falling into something that looks more like poverty than a solid middle class lifestyle. In the future, it seems to me that to be well off you either need to have specific skills that corporations value or you need to own a viable business. This is difficult for me to say because I have always valued free time (in the last 45 years I have probably averaged working about 26 to 30 hours a week), in modern times I would recommend having a side gig and a job. Go for maximum flexibility.

akeck 5y ago

As someone in the US, I'd be a solopreneur in a moment, if the healthcare situation didn't suck. At this point in my life, it suits me better than being an employee. Things are better post-ACA than pre-ACA, but still not all that great - especially if you live in a state that's not ACA friendly.

busymom0 5y ago
Do you think if one can make enough money from being a solopreneur to get private health insurance coverage, then it would tip on their favour? How much would a private health insurance plan cost per month?
- NAHWheatCracker 5y ago
  I spent 6 months on a private health insurance plan 4 years ago. It was about $200 per month with a very high deductible. This is in a state that is favorable for ACA. I just hopped on the state website now and I can get a similar plan with a premium of $250 per month. There are a lot of options with better deductibles and higher premiums. It's a burden for those who want to go without external employment, but I found it reasonable. It's less than my monthly budget for food.
  - busymom0 5y ago
    That honestly doesn't sound that bad. Any solopreneur who's planning on going independent could afford this by 2-3 nights of Uber over a weekend.

ilaksh 5y ago

What I have been doing recently is taking advantage of a cryptocurrency created by an MIT professor that has very low fees and facilitates micro transactions. I won't mention it by name because that is as far as I can tell an instant comment bury on HN. But the point being is that I have taken my recent consulting projects and turned them into automated services (i.e. web applications and APIs) that multiple people in the ecosystem can use. Cryptocurrency has helped make it simple to monetize these services. So the particular project I am hired for becomes the seed money for another app. And actually I took very little money for a few projects and have been working on an API that both will plug into for a few months while splitting my time with other subprojects. But if everything works out then I will have more income based on each each smart contract call to generate an NFT.